


Beauty

by lluviadinoche



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: LMAO, Oneshot, TMNT, just for old time's sake, raph admiring raphael, tmnt raph
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 04:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18307877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lluviadinoche/pseuds/lluviadinoche
Summary: Raphael thinks about the painter he is named after and admires the beauty and mystery of his life and his work.





	Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> For old time's sake <3

Raphael often stared at that old painting in his room. Or at least the close up of two little cherub angels painted on the Sistine Chapel. They were beautiful and the man he was named after painted them.

So perhaps he wasn’t the most artistic, nor was he really the biggest fan of art, but he felt a connection to the Raphael of the past who painted these images. Did he often sit and ponder things the way that he did?

Maybe he wasn’t a talking teenage turtle or the one eating ramen in his bed staring at a painting from hundreds of years before in the middle of an existential crisis, but he had to have wondered too. He must have been someone who stared at the world and questioned what it carried in the mysteries of the sea, the buildings, the sky, and even the lines along his hand.

Raphael sighed, laying his hand to rest. Ever since he found out that Raphael suffered from depression, he had wondered what it would have been like to talk to him. People had such twisted perceptions on these things and though Raphael knew what it felt like to be depressed, he did not know the feeling of depression itself, at least he didn’t think so. But the Raphael of the past, the man whose name he carried with him proudly lived with something like that. It was so strong and he couldn’t help but admire him.

This was someone with a strength he looked to and strived to honor. In the quiet of those fleeting moments he got, he would talk to that silly, beat up, image. He would talk to it as if Raphael was talking to him. He would call him Raph just as his brothers did and he would guide him through those moments nobody, not even Splinter, knew quite what to say, think, or do. It filled him with a soothing feeling that brimmed and threatened to pour all at once from him.

Even the shouts outside and the noise from April and his brothers didn’t disturb that moment. Though he knew it would end fast, he remained still and let time slow down and drizzle over him.

Nothing could ever rob him of the peace he felt when he spoke to the Raphael of the past. Gently grazing his fingers along the two figures, he thought that nothing could be more beautiful than that.

Oh, how ridiculous he must have looked to the people who had only seen the more rough side of him. To find him looking at a picture of a painting with the eyes of a child so full of wonder. He wondered what it would be like to travel to that world, to the past, and see the man who painted this.

Would he even know what to say or would he simply dissolve there staring at the beauty of a million words that did not exist? Who was he kidding, he didn’t even speak Italian nor was he human. Traveling to a world like that and seeing Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was but a dream. Their connection went over hundreds of years and borders but even if he was able to see him from around a corner, it would be just that, around the corner. He was Raph and that was Raphael.

Raphael was beautiful. His work stunned him and left him wondering what it would be like to see the real things and be where he had stepped once. Raph wanted nothing more than to create something like that. He wished he could paint those words that didn’t yet exist and those stories that had not yet been told. He wished that he could be as beautiful as he was. But the one thing Raph did not wish, no matter how much he admired him, was to switch places with him.

They came from two different worlds and two different places in those worlds. There was nothing that could ever prepare him for the battles personal to him. Then there was his death. There still wasn’t an explanation and he died so young. Call the turtle selfish, but he desired a life longer than that. Everything about his death and the supposed reason he died. I mean, go Raphael, but that wasn’t the way Raph wanted to go.

But he did want a rivalry like that. Yes, he supposed he fought side by side with his brothers, but to have a rivalry like his with Michelangelo—Yes, he wanted that. He wanted to be favored by someone with influence so much that it caused the other person to burn. He wanted to grow and learn from someone and butt heads with them because while they were the greatest, he was the favorite. He didn’t know what on Earth in though. Perhaps literature. Raph loved literature. He loved writing. Poems, short stories, everything and anything. Something that would make Raphael of the past beam and give him words  of praise through his paintings.

Sometimes Raph wondered if there was even a reason he admired the artist so much beyond the name that they shared. But then he remembered the secrets and uncertainty that came with his name that Raph soaked into his skin. It was glorious, but he did not want to live those secrets and unknown truths. Raphael was beautiful, but he was a beautiful mystery and Raph preferred to be the mutant teenager admiring him centuries later.

He ripped his hand away when his door was suddenly opened to Leonardo calling him out, April beaming brightly from behind him. And suddenly, like that, the peaceful world he hid himself away in crumbled and turned to ash.

No worry though. Snapping out his trance, he left the room with his brother and their friend to join everyone else in whatever antic it was that they were up to.

Raphael of the past would be waiting when he returned, a million more words that did not yet exist to be found in the strokes of his work.


End file.
